In 1816 a great event happened to the little boy. His father emigrated to Indiana from Knob Creek (Thomas Lincoln had removed from the farm on Nolin Creek to one some fifteen miles northeast, on Knob Creek, when Abraham was four years old). “This removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky,” says his son. It was due, as well, no doubt, to the fascination which an unknown country has always for the adventurous, and to that restless pioneer spirit which drives even men of sober judgment continually towards the frontier, in search of a place where the conflict with nature is less severe—some spot farther on, to which a friend or a neighbor has preceded, and from which he sends back glowing reports. It may be that Thomas Lincoln was tempted into Indiana by the reports of his brother Josiah, who had settled on the Big Blue River in that State. At all events, in the fall of 1816 he started with wife and children and household stores to journey by horseback and by wagon from Knob Creek to a farm selected on a previous trip he had made. This farm, located near Little Pigeon Creek, about fifteen miles north of the Ohio River, and a mile and a half east of Gentryville, Spencer County, was in a forest so dense that the road for the travellers had to be hewed out as they went.
SARAH BUSH LINCOLN.
From a photograph in the possession of her granddaughter, Mrs. Harriet Chapman of Charleston, Illinois. Sarah Bush was born in Kentucky, December 13, 1788. She was a friend of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, and it is said that Thomas Lincoln had been her suitor before she married Daniel Johnston. Her husband died in October, 1818. In November, 1819, Thomas Lincoln went to Kentucky to seek her a second time in marriage. An incident of the courtship is told by Mr. J. L. Nall, a cousin of President Lincoln: “Uncle Thomas came back to Kentucky after the death of his first wife, Nancy Hanks, and proposed marriage to the widow Johnston; she told him that she would be perfectly willing to marry him, as she had known him a long time, and felt that the marriage would be congenial and happy; but it would be impossible for her even to think of marrying, and leaving the State, as she was considerably in debt. Uncle Thomas told her that need make no difference, as he had plenty of money, and would take care of her financial affairs; and when he had ascertained the amount of her indebtedness and the names of the parties to whom the money was due, he went around and redeemed all her paper and presented it to her, and told her, when she showed so much honor about debts, he was more fully satisfied than ever that she would make him a good wife. She said, as he had displayed so much generosity in her behalf, she was willing then to marry and go with him to Spencer County, Indiana.” Sarah Bush Lincoln changed the character of the Lincoln home completely when she entered it, and there is no question of the importance of her influence upon the development of her step-son Abraham. She was a woman of great natural dignity and kindliness, and highly esteemed by all who knew her. She died on the 10th of December, 1869, at the old homestead in Coles County, Illinois.
THE MARRIAGE BOND GIVEN BY THOMAS LINCOLN AT HIS MARRIAGE WITH SARAH JOHNSTON.—NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.
From a tracing made by Henry Whitney Cleveland.
BUCKTHORN VALLEY, WHERE LINCOLN WORKED AND HUNTED.
After a photograph made for this biography. In this valley are located nearly all the farms on which Lincoln worked in his boyhood, including the famous Crawford place, where he and his sister Sarah were both employed as “help.” Visitors to the locality have pointed out to them numberless items associated with his early life—fields he helped to clear and till, fences he built, houses he repaired, wells he dug, paths he walked, playgrounds he frequented. Indeed, the inhabitants of Buckthorn Valley take the greatest pride in Lincoln’s connection with it.
To a boy of seven years, free from all responsibility, and too vigorous to feel its hardships, such a journey must have been, as William Cooper Howells, the father of the novelist, says of his own trip from Virginia to Ohio, in 1813, “a panorama of delightful novelty.” Life suddenly ceased its routine, and every day brought forth new scenes and adventures. Little Abraham saw forests greater than he had ever dreamed of, peopled by strange birds and beasts, and he crossed a river so wide that it must have seemed to him like the sea. To Thomas and Nancy Lincoln the journey was probably a hard and sad one; but to the children beside them it was a wonderful voyage into the unknown.
On arriving at the new farm an axe was put into the boy’s hands, and he was set to work to aid in clearing a field for corn, and to help build the “half-face camp” which for a year was the home of the Lincolns. There were few more primitive homes in the wilderness of Indiana in 1816 than this of young Lincoln’s, and there were few families, even in that day, who were forced to practise more makeshifts to get a living. The cabin which took the place of the “half-face camp” had but one room, with a loft above. For a long time there was no window, door, or floor; not even the traditional deer-skin hung before the exit; there was no oiled paper over the opening for light; there was no puncheon covering on the ground.
THE OLD SWIMMING-HOLE.
A secluded part of Little Pigeon Creek, not far from Gentryville, where Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, John Johnston, the Gentry boys, and others of the neighborhood used to bathe. It is still pointed out as “the place where Abe went in swimming.”
BRICK-MOULD USED BY THOMAS LINCOLN.
From a photograph loaned by Jesse W. Weik.
The furniture was of their own manufacture. The table and chairs were of the rudest sort—rough slabs of wood in which holes were bored and legs fitted in. Their bedstead, or, rather, bed-frame, was made of poles held up by two outer posts, and the ends made firm by inserting the poles in auger-holes that had been bored in a log which was a part of the wall of the cabin; skins were its chief covering. Little Abraham’s bed was even more primitive. He slept on a heap of dry leaves in the corner of the loft, to which he mounted by means of pegs driven into the wall.
WELL DUG BY LINCOLN.
In a field near the Crawford house is a well which is pointed out to sight-seers as one which Lincoln helped to dig. Many things about the Crawford place—fences, corn-cribs, house, barn—were built in part by Lincoln.
HICKORY-BARK OX-MUZZLE.
After a drawing made from the original, in the collection of pioneer articles in the United States National Museum, at Washington, D. C. Hickory bark was used freely by the Western pioneers. From it and from corn husks they were obliged, in fact, to make most of their harness.
Their food, if coarse, was usually abundant; the chief difficulty in supplying the larder was to secure any variety. Of game there was plenty—deer, bear, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks, birds of all kinds. There were fish in the streams, and wild fruits of many kinds in the woods in the summer, and these were dried for winter use; but the difficulty of raising and milling corn and wheat was very great. Indeed, in many places in the West the first flour cake was an historical event.[5] Corn dodger was the every-day bread of the Lincoln household, the wheat cake being a dainty reserved for Sunday mornings.
THE CRAWFORD HOUSE, WHERE LINCOLN WAS A FARM-HAND.
The house of Josiah Crawford, near Gentryville, Indiana. Here Lincoln worked by the day for several months, while his sister was a “hired girl” for Mrs. Crawford. In 1829 Lincoln cut down timber and whip-sawed it into planks for a new house which his father proposed to build; but Thomas Lincoln decided to go to Illinois before the new house was begun, and Abraham sold his planks to Mr. Crawford, who worked them into the southeast room of his house, where relic-seekers have since cut them to pieces to make canes. This picture is made after a photograph taken before the death of Mr. and Mrs. Crawford, both of whom are shown here.
Potatoes were the only vegetables raised in any quantity, and there were times in the Lincoln family when they were the only food on the table; a fact proved to posterity by the oft-quoted remark of Abraham to his father after the latter had asked a blessing over a dish of roasted potatoes—that they were “mighty poor blessings.” Not only were they all the Lincolns had for dinner sometimes; one of their neighbors tells of calling there when raw potatoes, pared and washed, were passed around instead of apples or other fruit.
By permission, from Herndon and Weik’s “Life of Abraham Lincoln.”
Copyright 1892, by D. Appleton & Co.
LINCOLN FAMILY RECORD.
Written by Abraham Lincoln in his Father’s Bible. From original in possession of C. F. Gunther, Esq., Chicago.
The food was prepared in the rudest way, for the supply of both groceries and cooking utensils was limited. The former were frequently wanting entirely, and as for the latter, the most important item was the Dutch oven. An indispensable article in the primitive kitchen outfit was the “gritter.” It was made by flattening out an old piece of tin, punching it full of holes, and nailing it to a board. Upon this all sorts of things were grated, even ears of corn, in which slow way enough meal was sometimes secured for bread. Old tin was used for many other little contrivances besides the “gritter,” and every scrap was carefully saved. Most of the dishes were of pewter; the spoons, iron; the knives and forks, horn-handled.
The Lincolns of course made their own soap and candles, and if they had cotton or wool to wear they had literally to grow it. One of the “old settlers” of Illinois says of her experience in clothing her family:
“As for our clothes, we had to raise, pick, spin, and weave cotton for winter and summer. We also made linsey of wool and flax. The first indigo we had we raised. Besides that we used sumac berries, white-walnut bark, and other barks for coloring.
DENNIS HANKS.
From a photograph in the Libby Prison Museum of Chicago, by permission of Mr. C. F. Gunther. Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was born in Kentucky, in 1799, and was brought up by his uncle Thomas Sparrow. The year after Thomas Lincoln moved to Indiana, Thomas Sparrow followed him, but both he and his wife died there in 1818. Dennis then became an inmate of the Lincoln household. He afterwards married one of the daughters of Sally Bush Lincoln. It was largely through his influence that the Lincolns moved into Illinois in 1830. Dennis Hanks has been one of the most prolific contributors to the early period of Mr. Lincoln’s life, his letters to Mr. Herndon being full of curious and valuable matter. He died in October, 1892. One of his daughters, Mrs. Harriet Chapman, is still living at Charleston, Illinois.
“Now for cotton picking. We children had to lie before the fire and pick the seed from the cotton bolls before we could go to bed. The warmer the cotton the better it picked; so we would take a good sweat. The next day that had to be carded and spun; so some would soap the cotton, some card, and some spin; and when we would get enough spun and colored to make a dress apiece we would put it in the loom and weave it. It did not take fifteen or twenty yards to make a dress then; six or eight yards of linsey were enough for any woman.”
It is probable that young Abraham Lincoln wore little cotton or linsey-woolsey. His trousers were of roughly tanned deer-skin, his foot-covering a home-made moccasin, his cap a coonskin; it was only the material for his shirt or blouse which was woven at home. If this costume had some obvious disadvantages, it was not to be despised. So good an authority as Governor Reynolds says of one of its articles—the linsey-woolsey shirt—“It was an excellent garment. I have never felt so happy and healthy since I put it off.”
These “pretty pinching times,” as Abraham Lincoln once described the early days in Indiana, lasted until 1819. The year before, Nancy Lincoln had died, and for many months no more forlorn place could be conceived than this pioneer home bereft of its guiding spirit; but finally Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and returned with a new wife—Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children, John, Sarah, and Matilda. The new mother came well provided with household furniture, bringing many things unfamiliar to little Abraham—“one fine bureau, one table, one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, and other articles.” She was a woman of energy, thrift, and gentleness, and at once made the cabin home-like, and taught the children habits of cleanliness and comfort.
MOUTH OF ANDERSON CREEK, WHERE LINCOLN KEPT THE FERRY-BOAT.
From a photograph taken for this biography. This ferry, at the mouth of Anderson Creek, was first established and owned by James McDaniel, and was afterwards kept by his son-in-law James Taylor. It was the latter who hired Abraham Lincoln, about 1826, to attend the ferry-boat. As the boat did not keep him busy all the time, he acted as man-of-all-work around the farm. A son of James Taylor, Captain Green B. Taylor of South Dakota, is still alive, and remembers distinctly the months Lincoln spent in his father’s employ. Captain Taylor says that Lincoln “slept up-stairs” with him, and used to read “till near midnight.”
JOSIAH CRAWFORD.
Among those whom Lincoln served in Indiana as “hired boy” was Josiah Crawford, a well-to-do farmer living near Gentryville. Mr. Crawford owned a copy of Weems’s “Life of Washington,” a precious book in those days, and Lincoln borrowed it to read. “Late in the night, before going to rest, he placed the borrowed book in his only bookcase, the opening between two logs of the walls of the cabin, and retired to dream of its contents. During the night it rained; the water dripping over the ‘mud-daubing’ on to the book stained the leaves and warped the binding. Abe valued the book in proportion to the interest he had in the hero, and felt that the owner must value it beyond his ability to pay. It was with the greatest trepidation he took the book home and told the story, and asked how he might hope to make restitution. Mr. Crawford answered: ‘Being as it is you, Abe, I won’t be hard on you. Come over and shuck corn three days, and the book is yours.’ Shuck corn three days and receive a hero’s life! He felt that the owner was giving him a magnificent present. After reading the book he used to tell the Crawfords: ‘I do not always intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like.’ His whole mind was devoted to books, and he declared he ‘was going to fit himself for a profession.’ These declarations were often made to Mrs. Crawford, who took almost a mother’s interest in him, and she would ask: ‘What do you want to be now?’ His answer was invariably: ‘I’ll be President.’ As he was generally playing a joke on some one, she would answer: ‘You’d make a purty President with all your tricks and jokes. Now, wouldn’t you?’ He would then declare: ‘Oh, I’ll study and get ready, and then the chance will come.’”[6]
Abraham was ten years old when his new mother came from Kentucky, and he was already an important member of the family. He was remarkably strong for his years, and the work he could do in a day was a decided advantage to Thomas Lincoln. The axe which had been put into his hand to help in making the first clearing, he had never been allowed to drop; indeed, as he says himself, “from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument.” Besides, he drove the team, cut the elm and linn brush with which the stock was often fed, learned to handle the old shovel-plough, to wield the sickle, to thresh the wheat with a flail, to fan and clean it with a sheet, to go to mill and turn the hard-earned grist into flour. In short, he learned all the trades the settler’s boy must know, and so well that when his father did not need him he could hire him to the neighbors. Thomas Lincoln also taught him the rudiments of carpentry and cabinet-making, and kept him busy much of the time as his assistant in his trade. There are houses still standing, in and near Gentryville, on which it is said he worked. The families of Lamar, Jones, Crawford, Gentry, Turnham, and Richardson, all claim the honor of having employed him upon their cabins.
A MISSISSIPPI “BROAD-HORN.”
From a model in the exhibit of the United States National Museum at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895. The flatboat which Abraham Lincoln piloted to New Orleans was not, probably, as well built a boat as the above model represents; but it was built on the same general plan. The hold was enclosed to protect the produce, and on the deck was a cabin in which the boatmen lived. In going down the river, rough sails were sometimes rigged up on these broad-horns, though they floated usually, directed by huge paddles. If the boat was brought back, it was warped and poled by hand up the river. More often, however, the boatmen sold both boat and cargo at New Orleans, and came back by the steamers as deck passengers. Boats like the two models on this page are still seen in great numbers on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
A RIVER PRODUCE BOAT.
From a model in the exhibit of the United States National Museum at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895. The photograph of this model, and of the one above, we owe to the courtesy of the director of the Museum, Mr. G. Brown Goode.
As he grew older he became one of the strongest and most popular “hands” in the vicinity, and much of his time was spent as a “hired boy” on some neighbor’s farm. For twenty-five cents a day—paid to his father—he was hostler, ploughman, wood-chopper, and carpenter, besides helping the women with the “chores.” For them he was ready to carry water, make the fire, even tend the baby. No wonder that a laborer who never refused to do anything asked of him, who could “strike with a mall heavier blows” and “sink an axe deeper into the wood” than anybody else in the community, and who at the same time was general help for the women, never lacked a job in Gentryville.
JOSEPH GENTRY.
One of the few companions of Lincoln’s youth in Indiana, now living, is Joseph Gentry. He resides on a farm one-fourth mile west from the Lincoln farm, where he has lived about sixty years. When a boy he lived in Gentryville—a town founded by the Gentrys. He was present at the funeral of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and remembers hearing the minister say it was through the efforts of the little son of the dead woman that his services had been secured.
Of all the tasks his rude life brought him, none seems to have suited him better than going to the mill. It was, perhaps, as much the leisure enforced by this trip as anything else that attracted him. The machinery was primitive, and each man waited his turn, which sometimes was long in coming. A story is told by one of the pioneers of Illinois of going many miles with a grist, and waiting so long for his turn that, when it came, he and his horse had eaten all the corn, and he had none to grind. This waiting with other men and boys on like errands gave an opportunity for talk, story-telling, and games, which were Lincoln’s delight.
In 1826 he spent several months as a ferryman at the mouth of Anderson Creek, where it joins the Ohio. This experience suggested new possibilities to him. It was a custom among the farmers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois at this date to collect a quantity of produce, and float down to New Orleans on a raft, to sell it. Young Lincoln saw this, and wanted to try his fortune as a produce merchant. An incident of his projected trip he related once to Mr. Seward:
“Seward,” he said, “did you ever hear how I earned my first dollar?”
“No,” said Mr. Seward.
Carbon enlargement, made by Sherman & McHugh of New York City.
LINCOLN IN 1858.
From a photograph loaned by W. J. Franklin of Macomb, Illinois, and taken in 1866 from an ambrotype made in 1858 in Macomb. This portrait figures in the collection in the Lincoln Home at Springfield, Illinois, and on the back of the photograph is the following inscription: “This likeness of Abraham Lincoln is a faithful copy of an original ambrotype, now in possession of James K. Magie. It was taken August 25, 1858, by Mr. T. P. Pierson, at Macomb, in this State, and is believed to be of anterior date to any other likeness of Mr. Lincoln ever brought before the public. Mr. Magie happened to remain over night at Macomb, at the same hotel with Mr. Lincoln, and the next morning took a walk about town, and upon Mr. Magie’s invitation they stepped into Mr. Pierson’s establishment, and the ambrotype of which this is a copy was the result. Mr. Lincoln, upon entering, looked at the camera as though he was unfamiliar with such an instrument, and then remarked: ‘Well, do you want to take a shot at me with that thing?’ He was shown to a glass, where he was told to ‘fix up,’ but declined, saying it would not be much of a likeness if he fixed up any. The old neighbors and acquaintances of Mr. Lincoln in Illinois, upon seeing this picture, are apt to exclaim: ‘There! that’s the best likeness of Mr. Lincoln that I ever saw!’ The dress he wore in this picture is the same in which he made his famous canvass with Senator Douglas.” This inscription was written by J. C. Power, now dead, but for many years custodian of the Lincoln monument in Springfield.
“Well,” replied he, “I was about eighteen years of age, and belonged, as you know, to what they call down South the ‘scrubs;’ people who do not own land and slaves are nobody there; but we had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell. After much persuasion I had got the consent of my mother to go, and had constructed a flatboat large enough to take the few barrels of things we had gathered to New Orleans. A steamer was going down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the Western streams, and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the landings, they were to go out in a boat, the steamer stopping, and taking them on board. I was contemplating my new boat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any part, when two men with trunks came down to the shore in carriages, and looking at the different boats, singled out mine, and asked, ‘Who owns this?’ I answered modestly, ‘I do.’ ‘Will you,’ said one of them, ‘take us and our trunks out to the steamer?’ ‘Certainly,’ said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning something, and supposed that each of them would give me a couple of bits. The trunks were put in my boat, the passengers seated themselves on them, and I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on board, and I lifted the trunks and put them on the deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out, ‘You have forgotten to pay me.’ Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and threw it on the bottom of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.”
SAMUEL CRAWFORD.
Only living son of Josiah Crawford, who lent Lincoln the Weems’s “Life of Washington.” To our representative in Indiana, who secured this picture of Mr. Crawford, he said, when asked if he remembered the Lincolns: “Oh, yes; I remember them, although I was not Abraham’s age. He was twelve years older than I. One day I ran in, calling out, ‘Mother! mother! Aaron Grigsby is sparking Sally Lincoln; I saw him kiss her!’ Mother scolded me, and told me I must stop watching Sally, or I wouldn’t get to the wedding. [It will be remembered that Sally Lincoln was ‘help’ in the Crawford family, and that she afterwards married Aaron Grigsby.] Neighbors thought lots more of each other then than now, and it seems like everybody liked the Lincolns. We were well acquainted, for Mr. Thomas Lincoln was a good carpenter, and made the cupboard, mantels, doors, and sashes in our old home that was burned down.”
Soon after this, while he was working for Mr. Gentry, the leading citizen of Gentryville, his employer decided to send a load of produce to New Orleans, and chose young Lincoln to go as “bow-hand,” “to work the front oars.” For this trip he received eight dollars a month and his passage back.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.—NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.
After a photograph in the collection of Mr. J. C. Browne of Philadelphia.
MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLATBOAT.